Monday March 22 Lent 5
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Psalm 31
I am being attacked from all sides but trust that God will rescue me. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus quotes from this psalm as he is dying. While often used on Fridays, and on Good Friday, this psalm is chosen as we approach Holy Week and the anniversary of Jesus’ execution next week.
Jeremiah 24: 1-10
Jeremiah uses the image of two baskets of figs—one basket with delicious figs and the other with rotten figs to represent two groups of Israelites. Those who are suffering in exile in Babylon because of their faithfulness to the God of justice will be returned to Jerusalem and will be like wholesome and delicious figs presented at the temple there. But the leaders and the kings whose unfaithfulness caused this disaster and who tried to cooperate with the invading king and with the king of Egypt will be like rotten figs which would be an insult to present at the temple in Jerusalem when it is rebuilt.
When we avoid the cost of caring for the oppressed with justice, we also court becoming repugnant like rotten figs.
John 9: 1-17
Jesus heals someone who has been blind from birth—in ancient culture an absolute impossibility. In John, such stories about blindness always operate symbolically as well as on the obvious level—it is us and our world that have always refused to “see” that self-sacrificing love is the only way for the world to be whole. Yet, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, a miracle can still happen and even though we and our world have always been blind, we will be able to “see.”
As usual in John’s gospel, a significant event if followed by lengthy discussion about its significance. Did the blind man’s parents somehow cause his blindness? Was he really healed or is this someone else? Would God do a healing on the Sabbath when God commanded there be no work on the Sabbath? We may be hearing the responses Christians were making to criticisms of Jesus and Christianity at the time when John wrote his gospel. These discussions will take up the next two days of our gospel readings.
When we are healed, as the man born blind was, and come to see the way to live life fully, there will be challenges for us, too. Because we no longer go along with the crowd, challenges will come from inside ourselves and from outside. We will find ourselves pressed to deny what we saw when we were healed from the blindness of thinking that always looking after our self first is the way to be safe and fulfilled.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son came into the world
to free us all from sin and death.
Breathe upon us with the power of your Spirit,
that we may be raised to new life in Christ,
and serve you in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
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